La Guerre Est Finie

Rating:
Summary: No peace.
Review: *La Guerre Est Finie* is about a Spanish revolutionary (Yves Montand) in his 3rd decade of agitating against Franco. For the nonce, he lives in France and has two mistresses. Ripe enough for you? Well, the movie was directed by Alain Resnais, a man who will never be confused with Ian Fleming. Therefore, don't expect an action flick or a spy spoof. Instead of shootouts, Resnais gives us the meticulous altering of passport photos. Instead of glamorous casinos, he shows the interior of a small garage of some guy's house and nondescript bedrooms. Instead of martinis, there's coffee. Instead of tuxedos, there's cardigans. You get the idea. But all the mundanities only serve to provide a depressingly realistic context for the movie's deeper themes, the main one being Time as destroyer. Time has certainly beat up Montand's Diego: his face is pock-marked and sagging. (It contrasts nicely to then-newcomer Genevieve Bujold's peppy little-girl face.) There's a grievous sense in *La Guerre Est Finie* that the world is running down, grinding to a halt, like Diego's comrades who keel over from coronaries. And when the clockwork finally breaks down someday, no one will be where they need to be. (Yes, Franco's dictatorship will even pass away, but too late for the characters in the story. Time destroys EVERYTHING.) This is one of the best films of the French New Wave by its best practitioner -- indispensable for movie lovers everywhere. Highest possible rating. The score, by the way, is one of the most beautiful ever put to film. [The DVD, by "Image Entertainment",[stink]s. The glories of Sacha Vierny's photography will remain obscured till this movie finally gets the Criterion Treatment (which it had better!). Yes yes, the movie is darkly composed, but not THIS darkly. No features, natch. Whatever. It's one of two Resnais films available on DVD, so I guess you'd better get it anyway.]

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the worst movie ever
Review: I am thrilled that a DVD version of this nightmare has been released. After 36 long years I am able to show my friends what I have so often argued is the most horrible example of film making in all human history. I recently viewed it for the second time, the first being in 1966. Perhaps I was too young then to appreciate the subtleties or nuances of the film, its textures and complexities. Gimme a break, this thing plays worse now than it did then.

The reason I firmly believe that this is the worst flick I've ever seen is that it actually takes itself seriously: It has a respected director (Resnais), stars the greatest French actor ever (Montand), and introduces the beautiful and talented Genevieve Bujold (oh those eyes). Throw in Ingrid Thulin (Bergman freaks know this talented woman) and the movie shouldn't miss. It does, it is just bad.

There's a story in there somewhere wrapped around a few steamy (for the times) sex scenes and a delightful bit of on-camera puking (always fun). Mostly the movie tries to insult your sensibilities while engaging in a pointless and confusing character study of a frustrated middle-aged anti-Franco Marxist. The problem is the guy is shallow, there is no character to study. The rest of the people are very '60s Euro-lefties, very chic, and very uninteresting to all but themselves (and Resnais) in 1966 - I can't begin to imagine how boring they must be to modern audiences. If you want to be entertained while battling against old right-wing Spanish dictators grab yourself some Hemingway. Now there's a guy who could study character.

When we left that theater in 1966 my date turned to me laughingly and said that if I lived a good life God would never make me see a movie that bad again. Apparently I've lived a good life.

Listen, I've sat through Ed Wood productions and Anne-Margaret's "Kitten With a Whip" but "La Guerre Est Finie" remains the worst flick I've ever seen.

Rating:
Summary: The Review is Not Over
Review: It is fruitless to even attempt to form an opinion of a Resnais film without viewing it at least 4 or 5 times. This film, albeit not as perplexing as "Muriel" or "Last Year At Marienbad" still deserves a thorough analysis before one makes such a statement as one reviewer made.

Resanis was never a director that set out to entertain his audience; just as Beckett didn't write dime store fiction. First and foremost Resanis is infinitely interested in the formal techniques of the cinema. How do we represent the consciousness visually, how do we break the linear temporality which has plagued cinema, how do we present memories, and visions of the future, while existing in the present? This film does not explore these notions as deeply as "Muriel" does, but it is essential in studying the trajectory of one of cinemas most radical innovators.

It disappoints me to read reviews that say Resnais' characters are shallow or one dimensional. For these reviewers fail to see that Resnais, like Tarkovsky, Antonioni, or Bresson, was never a character driven director, inasmuch as people in his films are symbols, abstractions, vessels in which ideas are carried. Resnais doesn't seek the obvious and contrived drama which cheaply manipulates and numbs the audience. His films remain distant and objective, leaving the spectators minds "on" allowing them time to examine the phenomenon on the screen as they're watching; rather then tuning their minds off, and soaking them with emotions. Audiences, especially Americans, are not accustomed to this type of intellectually engaging viewing; in turn they often have hostile reactions. They announce the films to be "obscure," "boring," "pretentious," and other such empty adjectives. A friend relayed to me a story of viewing Angelopoulos' "Ulysses Gaze" in which a frustrated and bored audience began talking to each other loudly and making cat calls at the screen (a scene reminiscent of the debut of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring"). This type of mob reaction is absolutely fascinating to me.

I will omit from commenting on the thematic element of the film because you can find many a synopsis written on the film all over the web. I'll just post a final caveat. When you come across a hostile, negative review, I recomend you to check the reviewers other reviews and see if their aesthetics agree with yours. Usually I find that people who laud films such as this, tend to favor more mainstream fare; so don't be discouraged, watch the film for yourself and make up your own mind.

Rating:
Summary: The Review is Not Over
Review: It is fruitless to even attempt to form an opinion of a Resnais film without viewing it at least 4 or 5 times. This film, albeit not as perplexing as "Muriel" or "Last Year At Marienbad" still deserves a thorough analysis before one makes such a statement as one reviewer made.

Resanis was never a director that set out to entertain his audience; just as Beckett didn't write dime store fiction. First and foremost Resanis is infinitely interested in the formal techniques of the cinema. How do we represent the consciousness visually, how do we break the linear temporality which has plagued cinema, how do we present memories, and visions of the future, while existing in the present? This film does not explore these notions as deeply as "Muriel" does, but it is essential in studying the trajectory of one of cinemas most radical innovators.

It disappoints me to read reviews that say Resnais' characters are shallow or one dimensional. For these reviewers fail to see that Resnais, like Tarkovsky, Antonioni, or Bresson, was never a character driven director, inasmuch as people in his films are symbols, abstractions, vessels in which ideas are carried. Resnais doesn't seek the obvious and contrived drama which cheaply manipulates and numbs the audience. His films remain distant and objective, leaving the spectators minds "on" allowing them time to examine the phenomenon on the screen as they're watching; rather then tuning their minds off, and soaking them with emotions. Audiences, especially Americans, are not accustomed to this type of intellectually engaging viewing; in turn they often have hostile reactions. They announce the films to be "obscure," "boring," "pretentious," and other such empty adjectives. A friend relayed to me a story of viewing Angelopoulos' "Ulysses Gaze" in which a frustrated and bored audience began talking to each other loudly and making cat calls at the screen (a scene reminiscent of the debut of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring"). This type of mob reaction is absolutely fascinating to me.

I will omit from commenting on the thematic element of the film because you can find many a synopsis written on the film all over the web. I'll just post a final caveat. When you come across a hostile, negative review, I recomend you to check the reviewers other reviews and see if their aesthetics agree with yours. Usually I find that people who laud films such as this, tend to favor more mainstream fare; so don't be discouraged, watch the film for yourself and make up your own mind.

Rating:
Summary: But who won?
Review: It seems odd to have to explain who Alain Resnais is, or his significance in the history of cinema. At the peak of his reputation, when "La Guerre est Finie" was made, he was viewed as one of the world's most innovative and important filmmakers. No one with even the remotest interest in film would have been unfamiliar with his name. Speaking personally, few have influenced me as deeply as he, in both technique and thematic interest.

Time moves on, however, and while Resnais will certainly have a place in film history, it will probably not be because of "La Guerre est Finie." It is clearly a product of its time, not just because Spain's subsequent history has blunted much of the film's thematic bite, but more because of its rather too self-conscious pensiveness. While the subject of a Resistance fighter moving across borders could work as an action film, "La Guerre est Finie" deliberately avoids much suspense in order to dramatize the dull stretches between high points.

This focus is certainly preferable to hyped-up action, but unfortunately Resnais and screenwriter Jorge Semprun do not so much reveal and evoke as replace one set of conventions with another. If you have seen any European, particularly French, art films from the 60s, you know what to expect: lots of philosophical talk, endless sequences of characters rolling around in bed, much political attitudinizing, and even more pointless walking around the streets of Paris. "La Guerre est Finie" is hardly alone in using these clichés, but that's the point. In what is supposed to be an in-depth examination of a character in crisis, fashion substitutes for observation and the results have more to do with filmmaking habit than any real grappling with the subject. (With one exception: the debates in the Communist cell to which the main character belong, thick with the pedantic rationalizations that give Marxist theory a bad name, feel like the gentle parody of a knowing insider.)

Which is not to suggest that "La Guerre est Finie" is either cheap or tawdry, merely banal in everything other than form. The camerawork and editing are so superbly rhythmed and timed you don't much care about the subject. (Given his talents, it's a pity Resnais has never made a musical.) Ironically, though perhaps inevitably, "Guerre" is most effective in the suspense scenes. It is nothing much better than respectably well-meaning as character drama; as formal exercise, on the other hand, it is peerless.

Rating:
Summary: Buy this DVD, but only if you love ultra-poetic cinema
Review: This is definitely one of the greatest films ever made and a true classic of the French New-Wave. Ultra-Subtle and layered within a deceptively simple surface naturalism is what this film is all about & no one should even bother watching for a conventional 'thriller' here, they'll have to dig deep beyond the dialogue to find it, and when they do, it'll only lead them down a whole lot of other paths they never bargained for requiring they bring even more to the film themselves for proper appreciation! In other words, the film is loaded with information but unfriendly and frustrating to the sleepwalking and comatose! Still, it's a much more accessible film than 1963's awe-inspiring "Muriel": Resnais paces "La Guerre est Finie" in a more conventional-audience-friendly-way, not hitting them with too much surface-information at one time, letting the complexity of Semprun's seemingly simple scripted situations set up elegant little visual gestures that poetically open up deeper, unanticipated layers of perspective. If you can't pick those gestures up and appreciate their significance you'll miss maybe 60 to 70% of the film's value and impact which has little to do with politics. In fact, though Semprun was a Marxist, Resnais himself was never either on the political left or right, and wasn't trying to make a political statement, being too modest to think he had the experience or knowledge necessary to do so (which was a fortuitous hang-up, just look at most of Jean-Luc Godard's sub-mediocre, pretentious 'political' films of the late '60s and '70s).

So, while plenty of filmmakers in the '60s tried to make big 'revolutionary,' 'politically committed' statements on film and only occasionally succeeded ("Weekend," "Z," "Before the Revolution," "The Conformist," "Black Jesus," "Battle of Algiers," "Burn!"), Resnais used the politically-committed characters in his film to make a study of what drives these people who are involved in these goings on year after year and their disillusionments when reality refuses to conform to their stubborn dreams and ideas.

Resnais is totally in charge here, at the top of his game: there isn't even a remote comparison to be made between the superior quality, elegance, and poetry of "La Guerre est Finie" with its utterly sub-mediocre and similarly Semprun-scripted & Montand-acted 'sequel' made by Joseph Losey in the mid-'70s "Roads to the South." Resnais' fantastic editing virtuosity, his rearranging of time and the narrative techniques used to imbue the present with a constant sense of the past and the future, push this seemingly simple film to the highest post-Citizen-Kane levels of narrative cinema (exemplified at its most fully realized and advanced point in Resnais' previous film "Muriel).

Besides having one of the most beautiful musical scores of any film, courtesy of Mr. Giovanni Fusco (the Rolls Royce to Ennio Morricone's Ford Mustang), "La Guerre est Finie" can boast of no less than three BEYOND ICONIC performances. Yves Montand, of course, was THE icon of the French cinema and night-club world at the time, and representative of everything that was 'hip' in the older generation that was being supplanted in the '60s. The younger generation of the world's youth could and would accept someone like Montand much more readily than they might a more uptight, conservative guy like Jean Gabin, Frank Sinatra, or even Elvis! Here he gives one of the greatest performances of his career as a communist-Bolshevik, anti-Franco 'professional revolutionary' of the old school accustomed to patience and long-term subversive manuevers who becomes involved with a charming young girl(fantastically portrayed by a young Genvieve Bujold, whose characterization becomes ICONIC, in retrospect, though Resnais might have even sensed it at the time, of everything about the passionately explosive yet naively doomed younger generation of the '60s) who's part of a new-school of Leninnists that prefer more direct terrorist methods. As an ICONIC representative of the creme of elegantly hip, sophisticated European women of the older '50s generation, we get non-other than beautiful Ingmar Bergman regular Ingrid Thulin. Thulin's performance is just as fantastically nuanced as Bujold and Montand's and may even be the best of the three, it's debatable. She seems to absorb all the film's many emotional levels in her characterization, without any traces of unweighed, unruminated judgments showing in her facial expressions. Everything is there instantly on that face: a deep strength in her very tenderness: the precise type of woman who can both anchor a character like Montand's in his precarious occupation or provide him a possible way out of a possibly 'lost battle,' a 'finished War,' a 'war' that he's waged for years and is having many doubts about the results of, and which he's seeing tragically and absurdly beginning again in Bujold's younger terrorist group with all the old mistakes intact and many more.

"La Guerre est Finie" was both a popular and critical success (it topped the New York Times best films of the year list) when it was released in the U.S. in 1967 (though the popular success probably had a lot more to do with the presence of Montand and the two very original sex scenes in the film than anything else). And now, after being unavailable in any home-viewing format for many years, it's out on DVD, and anyone who's interested can watch it as many times as necessary and find out why even accomplished directors like Bertolucci and Scorsese and Tavernier look up to Resnais' best films for inspiration.

The DVD transfer is nowhere near exemplary but still quite good and brings out the many shades of light gray used in the awesome black and white cinematography of Sacha Vierny. I only detected a few very negligable lines in the conversation scene in the car between Montand and Bujold. The widescreen tranfer isn't undermatted, it's a perfect 1.66 to 1, and it's anamorphically enhanced for widescreen TVs. You can switch the subtitles off and there's a ridiculous sounding dubbed English option included although only a moron would watch a film as meticulously subtle as this dubbed for anything more than a few laughs. The dub track comes in handy for picking up some easy dialogue to slow-down the general quickness of the film when you're too lazy to read lenghty subtitles. I certainly wouldn't make it a habit though! You're not watching a Spaghetti Western or Kung Fu film here where the dub almost becomes part of the joke. No real French film buff would watch Scorsese's "Raging Bull" in anything but the original English with French subtitles, in order to be able to pick up all the many New York Italian-American tough-guy conversational nuances that are so much more eloquent than the mere words themselves, and neither should any non-French-speaking Americans when watch Renoir or Resnais in anything but the original language and idiom it was made in. A film as complex as "La Guerre est Finie" could've definitely used some enlightening audio commentary from a film scholar or critic worthy of the name, but alas, the general public is left once again to its own devices to go ahead and misinterpret this great film. Those not content to be one of 'the general public' should go to the libray and check out John Francis Kreidl's out-of-print book on Resnais, where he spends a whole chapter going deeper into the elegant complexities of "La Guerre est Finie."

Rating:
Summary: A Fine DVD Edition of this Underappreciated Resnais Gem
Review: Until now only poor video transfers of "La Guerre Est Finie" have been available, so I was very eager to see how this DVD transfer looked. Needless to say, the transfer is wonderful and exceeded my expectations. Although one will not mistake this Image Entertainment transfer for a Criterion release, the presentation of this film is better than the those of the other two Resnais films currently available on DVD (Last Year at Marienbad" and "Mon Oncle d'Amerique"). Image's releases have been inconsistent, yielding wonderful issues of "Othello" and "City Lights," while producing horrible editions of Eisenstein's films. Although this issue of "La Guerre Est Finie" offers no special features, special features are often overrated anyway--what counts is that the film is shown here in its original widescreen presentation with removable subtitles, the value of which some producers have not yet recognized (I am thinking of Fox Lorber). Resnais is a director whose work has been vastly underrated, so I can only hope that DVD issues of some of his ultrarare later films will follow this release of a rare early work. This DVD is highly recommended. Now how about producing DVD editions of "Life is a Bed of Roses" and "Smoking/No Smoking"?